This year, Dunlop is celebrating MXR’s 40th anniversary, and we’re taking the opportunity to educate the playing public about the brand with a ton of blog and YouTube content to be rolled out through 2014. Let’s start with some tasty little morsels of information to whet your appetite. Have you ever wondered what the letters MXR stand for? What the first four MXR pedals were? Or what the most popular MXR pedal is? We put together an infographic to answer those and other questions. Check it out below.

You can download this infographic as a PDF so you can print it out, or just have a nice big digital copy of your very own: CLICK HERE.

Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door. For guitarists, that better mousetrap arrived in the early ’70s when Keith Barr gave the world the MXR Phase 90. It was the first of many brightly colored effects pedals that would find their way onto stages and into recording studios worldwide.

Barr and his partner Terry Sherwood owned an audio repair shop in Rochester, New York, where they were shocked by the poor quality of the guitar effects their customers brought in. Barr and Sherwood decided they could give guitar players a better sounding, cooler looking, and more reliable stompbox. MXR was born, and the company gave guitarists access to amazing sounds—some of which were previously available only in high-end studios—delivering those sounds in rugged, roadworthy enclosures.

The response was immediate and overwhelming. Starting with a few dozen Phase 90s constructed in a basement and sold out of a car at gigs, MXR added three more pedals to the core lineup: the Distortion +, the Dyna Comp® Compressor, and the Blue Box ™ Octave Fuzz. Soon, the growing company was cranking out thousands and thousands of stompboxes and distributing them all over the planet. Guitarists everywhere were plugging into MXR pedals, and those chains of multi-colored boxes became synonymous with out-of-this-world sounds and limitless possibilities.

The long list of timeless recordings that feature MXR pedals includes classic tunes by such giants as Led Zeppelin, Van Halen, the Rolling Stones, and many, many others. The vicious distortion on Blizzard of Ozz? MXR Distortion +. Jimmy Page’s “Fool in the Rain” solo? MXR Blue Box. Virtually every song on Van Halen I? Phase 90. Keith Richards’ trippy tone on “Shattered”? Phase 100. The intuitive operation and bullet-proof reliability of MXR pedals ensured that those guitar heroes could reproduce the sounds of their hit records night after night on the road as well as in the recording studio.

The music business can be fickle, however, and MXR’s fortunes would shift in the ’80s as other manufacturers began to catch up. MXR closed its doors, but the core products never fell out of favor. Jim Dunlop recognized this, and acquired and resurrected the MXR brand. Fittingly, Dunlop’s first MXR releases were the Phase 90, the Distortion +, the Dyna Comp Compressor, and the Blue Box Octave Fuzz. Dunlop’s acquisition meant that guitarists could once again get their hands on the classic MXR effects, and it also represented a continuation of Keith Barr’s innovative legacy with the eventual release of many new designs.

What’s more, the MXR roster now includes classic non-MXR effects such as the Talk Box and the Uni-Vibe Chorus/Vibrato—recreated with dead-on accuracy and imbued with all the qualities that made MXR famous—in addition to several signature effects developed in conjunction with guitar players such as Eddie Van Halen, Slash, Zakk Wylde, and Dimebag Darrell.

The 40th anniversary of MXR’s incorporation finds the company more vibrant and exciting than ever, offering dozens of models for guitar players and bass players, with the time-honored effects that got the company started sitting proudly alongside forward-thinking boxes never dreamed of by the founders.

The fact that we can’t remember a time when there weren’t hundreds of stompboxes to choose from is due in large part to MXR. The company’s first print ad, which appeared on the back cover of Rolling Stone and featured the then-unheard-of Phase 90, stated simply, “MXR: We Are Here.” Those words are far truer on the 40th anniversary than they were when they were written. The next 40 years will only bring more incredible sounds in neat little boxes to innovative musicians everywhere as the company that created such a big part of the soundtrack of our past provides the tools to take music into the future. Prepare to be amazed all over again.

In 2014, we’re celebrating MXR’s 40 years of innovation with a series of mini documentary videos covering its history—from being sold out of a suitcase to appearing on the world’s biggest stages—along with numerous artists, engineers, pedal designers, and original MXR personnel telling stories of sonic inspiration and discovery. Start below with the trailer for just a small sample of what’s to come; then watch our inspiring interview with MXR founding employee Ron Wilkerson, who explains the creative, business and technical enthusiasm that drove MXR’s formative years; and then watch as guitar hero Paul Gilbert recounts his first experiences with MXR effects, and explains how the right effects can influence experimentation and inspiration.

One of our guys recently found this Hamer guitar in a storage facility and brought it into the Dunlop shop for some TLC. It’s an early 2000s Hamer Newport Pro, a US made semi-hollow body beauty that was suffering, not so much from abuse, but just from lack of use. We decided to give it the Dunlop restorative treatment, utilizing Formula 65 products, Miracle Cloth, a little tape and steel wool, some elbow grease and attention to detail to bring this beautiful instrument back to top playing form. Here’s how it went down…

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The first thing we noticed was how corroded and nasty the frets were. The corrosion had overtaken each fret, and the fingerboard was in desperate need of oil conditioning. The strings were in the same shape—they were rusted, and felt and sounded completely dead.

Covering the pickups is important because the steel wool sheds, and the pickups being magnetic…well, you can see below that the steel wool bits collected around the pickups. The tape keeps the pickups free of the steel wool lint, and facilitates easy cleanup after that part of the job. We used pieces of this same tape to protect the fingerboard around each fret while we removed the corrosion.

We also removed the various chrome pieces—bridge hardware, pickup covers, output jack plate—and used the Miracle Cloth on them until they shined like new. Then we moved on to the body, which didn’t appear as damaged as the frets and chromed bits, but it had a film over most of it.

We used Formula 65 Polish & Cleaner applied to our Guitar Finish Cloth (5430) to cut through the film, then applied some Formula 65 Cream of Carnauba to buff out the shine and create a moisture- and stain-resistant barrier.

Finally, we conditioned the fingerboard with Formula 65 Fingerboard Deep Conditioner, reattached the clean chrome pieces, and restrung the instrument with Dunlop Electric Nickel 10-46 guitar strings. The final result is a gorgeous dark cherry burst guitar that looks and plays like new.

This particular process was specific to this guitar; in most cases, the damage will not be this extreme, and you will generally not need to go such lengths when caring for an instrument that is played regularly or properly stored.

We encourage you to get to know your instruments, and cleaning and care is a great, relatively easy way to become familiar with the basics. It’s also important to keep your guitar looking good, which is a part of staying healthy and playing well. Natural wear is good, but dirt, grime and neglect are not.

Formula 65 products are made to be easy to use, and while they’re powerful cleaning and finishing products, they’re easy on your instrument. Be sure to follow the instructions, and use all cleaning products in small, incremental amounts until you achieve the desired results. If you’re ever in doubt, please take your instrument to a professional tech or someone more experienced, and ask them if you can watch while they work.